Can you tell us about your background?

I’ve worked with Mainline Foundation in the Netherlands for the past seven years, first as international programme manager and now as director. A year ago Mainline initiated a new initiative: a museum about drugs. The name is Poppi: Drugs Museum Amsterdam. Our plan is to engage the general public and educate them about drugs and drug policy, to employ people who use drugs, and to make loads of money and channel that back to fund harm reduction work.

Before I started at Mainline, I specialized in migration and worked for quite some years as a social worker with refugees. In a far away past I studied Social Psychology and International Development Studies.

How would you describe your work in general?

I would say it is a mix between total chaos, complete ecstasy and near exhaustion. You need a lot of stamina to work in our field ?.

What drives you personally to work in your area of work?

The way the international community approaches drugs, to my opinion fuels one of the greatest forms of social injustice of our time. The end to this is not even in sight. Worse, we seem to regress. I am becoming more and more motivated to speak out and keen to move beyond the health silo that harm reduction is sometimes stuck in and reach out to people in the justice and development sector.

What is your current focus?

• Broadening harm reduction to include people who snort, smoke and ingest their drugs and not only those who inject. Moving beyond a biomedical model for harm reduction towards a human rights-based approach.
• Broadening harm reduction to include, in addition to people who use opioids, people who use stimulant (and other) drugs and suffer marginalization, stigma and discrimination as a consequence.
• Create independent funding streams (we hope in the future via Poppi: Drugs Museum Amsterdam) to move away from donors and subsidies.

Why do you think that your current focus is important?

Funding for harm reduction in the international ‘arena’ is often linked to HIV prevention. The fact that there is still funding is fantastic, but it is not sustainable. Governments are not jumping on board and donor funding is on the decline. We need to fit harm reduction under a different/new umbrella and work more inclusive.

Harm reduction is still underfunded in many countries, even if there is enough evidence that it works and is cost-effective. Why is that?

Ignorance, fear, recklessness and a lack of compassion.

Please tell us what harm reduction means to you.

Human dignity.